No heroes, no villains, just grim reality
Tells a tough, fictional story of four girls under the care of the province’s youth protection system
Catimini will break your heart. The second feature from Montreal writer-director Nathalie Saint-Pierre is an incredibly powerful piece of filmmaking and it packs such force precisely because Saint-Pierre wisely steers clear of knee-jerk sentimentality. It is a tough, clear-eyed look at four girls who are under the care of Quebec’s youth protection system and, in the hands of a lesser director, it could well have turned into a heart-tugging, threehankie TV movie-of-the-week — the kind of film you feel you should like more than you actually do.
Saint-Pierre, who wrote, directed, produced and edited this film, just tells the girls’ stories without any frills — there isn’t even a musical score — and that’s what makes the drama all the more devastating. She also makes a point of not painting a black-and-white portrait of this grim reality. She’s not sugar-coating it, but at the same time, she doesn’t make it seem as if all the foster parents or folks working in the youth detention centres are monsters. But they’re not heroes, either. They’re likely somewhere in between — just like folks in real life.
There are four separate segments focusing on the quartet of main characters. It begins with Cathy (Émilie Bierre), a 6-year-old girl, in the back seat of a car being ferried to her new home. At first, you don’t get a good look at the adults’ faces, which underlines Saint-Pierre’s point that everything here is going to be totally from the kids’ point of view. The foster mother Réjeanne (Isabelle Vincent) will turn out to be one of the main figures in the film — with it ending at a party to celebrate her “career” running a foster home.
Her boyfriend, Raynald (Roger La Rue), soon strikes a mighty close relationship with the little girl and it’s clear that he cultivates inappropriately intimate friendships with the girls Réjeanne takes care of. The film then follows Keyla (Joyce-Tamara Hall) after she is booted out of Réjeanne’s home and is sent to stay with another foster family. There she meets Mégane (Rosine Chouinard-Chauveau), a girl exploding with rage, a quality that puts her on a fast track to a stay at your friendly neighbourhood youth detention centre. The final section focuses on Manu (Frédérique Paré), who has just turned 18 and has left the youth protec- tion system to set up her own apartment for the first time. It might be the most depressing part of the quartet given that it underlines that even once you’re out of the system, you’re still carrying all that baggage around with you.
The four young actors playing the girls are all amazing, so good that you’ll be forgiven for thinking Saint-Pierre actually went and cast real kids from the youth protection world, which she did not. Vincent is also excellent as a woman who isn’t a monster, but has a terrifying coldness to her, dealing with these lost children like they’re commodities.
In the end, that’s what makes Catimini so terrifying. It’s just so real. It’s not about hammering home a political point. It’s simply documenting one of our society’s dirty little secrets, and SaintPierre doesn’t even give us the satisfaction of providing an old-fashioned villain.